RANDOM PIC OF THE WEEK
This gentle dog and his bird friends always cracks me up!
I’m not sure why “Gypsy Woman” from Brian Hyland popped into my head, but I’ve been singing it here and there around the house. It sure is a great song!
Monday the 25th – BACK-UP BIZARRO! – The first stop of the day and week was to my mailbox to get my packages. I mailed off some bills and signed photos, and then went over to Bob’s Big Boy to enjoy some of their newly-restored carhop service. I got some groceries, went back home to put them away, and edited some more of the Christoween Stalking videos which I’ve just posted on Christoween.net (in case you haven’t seen them yet). I did a test sketch of an elf character I’ll be doing on the internationally syndicated Christmas radio show “Christmas Across the Lands” (the sketch is for possible use in the hosts social media and print advertising) and I noticed that the chirping sound had returned. If you remember from a few weeks ago, I was awakened by a chirping sound that I thought was my iHome iPod alarm clock. I replaced the back-up batteries and went back to sleep. But the chirping has started again and it’s not the iPod player. Come to find out it’s my smoke alarm in the hallway just outside my bedroom. But all my smoke alarms are hard-wired so I was puzzled as to why it was chirping. After calling my contractor Handy Don, he informed me that smoke alarms have a back-up battery inside in case there’s a power outage. Obviously that battery was getting old. Luckily I had a 9 volt battery still in the package, in my utility drawer. I replaced the battery and all was good. While I was editing my Christoween Stalking video I decided to crop a piece of the original Patrick Owsley artwork for a specific shot in the 9th video. I would start out with the wide shot, as in Patrick’s artwork, and then in the video, I would cut in to the close-up, which was cropped in from the art piece. I saved the cropped version, but when I clicked out of the master shot I accidentally clicked YES when it asked me if I wanted to save changes. RATS! I did NOT want to do that! Now instead of reverting back to the original wide shot, I’ve saved the cropped version! And it was customized artwork that would be difficult to recreate. Luckily, my computer guy set up an internal ‘mirror image’ back-up that made a copy of my hard drive every day. So I went into the back-up, expecting to find the piece I needed, but I noticed that nothing has been backed up since 2018! What happened to the back-up system we set up? I called my computer guy in a panic thinking that I was looking in the wrong place. He got on my computer and took a look. Nope. The back-up hasn’t functioned since 2018! He’s going to create a local system for my house that will back everything up on a completely separate computer; no more INTERNAL backing up from hard-drive to hard-drive. I am NOT a fan of the cloud (for reasons I think you can guess) so that’s out of the question. So I had to re-create the customization I did to Patrick’s artwork all over again. It wasn’t difficult necessarily, but it was something that I shouldn’t have needed to do had I had my head screwed on. I’m telling ya…this whole past year has really messed with my head. Has it yours too? I recorded my auditions and typed out Wally’s Week. I hit the hay to be up for a Tuesday session.
Tuesday the 26th – STEAK REWARD! – During my three-hour session at Voice Trax West, for that super-secret client I’ve been working with for about 6 years now, I remembered that the Smokehouse, my favorite steak place, had a Tuesday night filet mignon steak special – and they deliver! Though I had just eaten some combo fried rice from Chin Chin before the session, I was achin’ for some steakin’! When we finished the session I stopped by the pet food store to get some supplies for Roxy, headed home to feed the kids, and then ordered up my Smokehouse feast. It was amazing. Later that night after my food coma wore off, I recorded my nightly auditions.
Wednesday the 27th – TWO TERRIBLE TESTS! – There were not one, but TWO clients who wanted to test my home studio system for upcoming sessions. I figured it would be quick so I scheduled them 15 minutes apart. The first one was for an upcoming video game, but he sprung some info on me about wanting me to back-up the session on my own system. Normally whatever you feed a client through the Source Connect system suffices, but this particular producer wants me to run a back-up on my end. I told them it wasn’t possible because my recording software and the Source Connect interface wrestle for control of my microphone feed. It wasn’t ‘splittable’ for that purpose. So then there was a back-and-forth about how we could make that happen. Meanwhile, my other test was scheduled to occur, and I told the guy we’d have to reconnect in about 15 minutes. I got on with the other producer, a toy manufacturer, but every time he’d try to connect with my system, everything would freeze. We tried again…freeze! And again…freeze! Now it was time to reconnect with the video game producer and see if he had come up with an idea. I told the toy producer I’d call him in about 20 minutes, and I connected with the video game producer. Two little easy tests that should have only taken 5 minutes each was now costing about an hour’s worth of my time! As we conversed I asked him where their studio was. He gave the location, and come to find out it was literally about 5 minutes from my house! I asked him if it would be better if I just came into their studio to record it and he said that would totally work! Problem solved. So now it was back to the toy producer. We tried connecting on Source Connect again and it worked this time! Then he mentioned that they had been having bad storms in the San Francisco area (where he was located) and that could have been the issue prior. But I found out later that sometimes the Source Connect servers sometimes just get overwhelmed and freezing can happen. Whew! The things one has to do to make a few bucks! I got to thinking about two external hard-drives that I had in my possession. One was a 1TB drive (which used to serve as my original back-up system) and the other is a 2TB drive I found in a hotel room in Las Vegas. I had it wiped and had a producer put some clips from a movie I did on the drive so I could take it to my editor to have a specific scene assembled for my upcoming Actor’s Reel. But I no longer needed that footage, so I could wipe that drive as well. I spent all night manually backing-up photos, documents, and videos from my main drive to this 1TB drive for safe-keeping. But as luck would have it, the 2TB drive wouldn’t talk to my computer. I think I need to have it formatted for my computer in order to work. Boy, it’s always something with this stinkin’ technology!
Thursday the 28th – RAIN, RIDDLER & RUSSELL! – The day started with some last-minute auditions and then I high-tailed it over to Voice Trax West for another three hour session for my super-secret client. While I worked, Andrew (VTW’s owner) was kind enough to reformat my 2TB external drive for my PC. I got home just in time to beat the onslaught of rain. I recorded a fun Riddler Cameo for a guy named Kenny, and my cat Spook stole the show! It’s hysterical! While it poured outside I continued backing stuff up on my external drives, recorded my auditions, and then took a nice ‘rainy night nap.’ I got up later to work around the house and continue monitoring the transfer of my valuable data to the back-up drive. I made a delicious Super Salad and watched an episode of “The Invaders” before bed. This one guest-starred Russell Johnson (The Professor from “Gilligan’s Island”) and he turned out to be an alien! It was a great performance from him! Lots of other great character actors from the day were also in it; Harold Gould, Don Gordon and Linda Day (before she was Linda Day George)!
Friday the 29th – OUTDOOR DINING RETURNS! – When I finished picking up my mail at my box I got a salad to go at Paty’s; one of my favorite restaurants! They were open again for outdoor dining, which I loved seeing. Everyone was SO happy to be out eating again, including the servers! I relaxed all evening and continued transferring stuff over to my external drives as a back-up. The rain had stopped, but that annoying chirping had started again. I replaced the battery, already! What more do you want from me?! Was the battery bad? Is the smoke detector bad?
Saturday the 30th – ABSOLUTE KEY-OS OR YOU’VE GOT TO BE KEY-RING ME!! – It was my dad’s 86th birthday, and I had a full day of stuff planned. First, I would be meeting my pal Edi at Lancers in Burbank for lunch to enjoy the return of outdoor dining! A day that started out so wonderful had a strange ending. It was a gorgeous day and I was looking forward to eating outside again with friends. I grabbed an iced tea, my satchel, and my house keys. I locked up the door leading to my garage, and then decided to pull a photo from my photo file and get it ready for signing. I got an e-mail just before I left informing me that someone had purchased another signed photo from my store, so I wanted to pull that photo and get it ready to be signed when I returned home. While I did that, I put my keys, satchel and iced tea on the roof of my Mustang. I pulled the photo from my file box, pulled out a Priority Mail envelope from my stash, and put them on my dryer so I’d remember to take them in when I got home. I collected my things from the roof of my car and drove off. I talked to my dad all the way to the restaurant and wished him a happy birthday. The lunch at Lancers was terrific, and afterwards we walked over to Hobby Lobby where I bought a couple of cool things. First, I got a great lenticular picture that looks like Kirk, Spock and McCoy are on the transporter pads beaming down. Depending upon which angle you look at it, they’re either there, beaming, or beamed. It’s brilliant! I also got a few t-shirts and a Darth Vader key hook to hang in my house. I drove straight home and when I got in my garage I couldn’t find my house keys anywhere! I tore my car apart thinking that they slipped down somewhere. Then I thought that maybe I had forgotten to lock the door leading to my garage, and the keys were still on the key hook just inside my door. I grabbed the door handle to open the door and nothing…it WAS locked! Furthermore, my alarm sense the vibration of the door handle and the countdown beep had started. That meant that I had precisely 30 seconds to unlock the door and disarm the alarm before that high-pitched, squealing alarm started ringing. CRAP! What was I going to do! I had no keys to get in! I went back to my car again in a panic. NO KEYS! The alarm started blaring, and you could hear it all throughout the neighborhood! I ran to where my hidden keys are for emergencies and I finally got in and disarmed the alarm. The poor animals were looking a bit shocked and curious. I’m sure the high-pitched squeal of the alarm hurt their ears. But now I had to figure out where my keys ended up. I thought I might have put them in my jacket pocket, and when I pulled out my face mask perhaps the keys hooked on to the elastic ear band and came out of my pocket. But my key ring is heavy so I would have felt the weight, and I would have heard the crash when the key ring hit the pavement. That wasn’t it, but just to be safe I called Lancer’s and Hobby Lobby to see if anyone had turned in some keys. Nada. Before they closed for the day, I grabbed my spare set of keys and headed to the hardware store to have new copies made. When I got home I realized that one didn’t work, so back to the hardware store I went to have it redone. Then back home to try them out. They worked. In my mind I retraced every step I made that afternoon. I know I had my keys with my when I left my house because I locked my house up with them. I fed the kids and got ready for a Zoom interview I had scheduled at 6pm. I was a bit late for the interview, but it went very well. Earlier in the day the guy at the hardware store told me that the smoke alarm chirp was most likely because I didn’t “reset” it when I replaced the battery. He said to hold it down and let it chirp three times and that would reset it. I gave that a go. It worked, for now. Exhausted, I laid down in the Puppet Room and mentally retraced my steps to try and figure out what happened with those keys. None of them were irreplaceable, so I’m OK. But I just hate doing stupid stuff like that and it bugs me. I started thinking that when I grabbed the stuff off the roof of my car to leave, that I must’ve only grabbed the iced tea and my satchel. I may have left my keys on the roof and driven off. That would make sense, because shortly after I fastened my seatbelt and drove off, I heard a sound coming from my left behind me. It sounded like the retracting device in my seatbelt housing had tightened up. I thought to myself that it was a very weird sound, but the seatbelt must’ve needed to retract to properly tighten around me. Then I realized what that sound really was (most likely)! As I took a right turn out of my garage that sound was the sound of my house keys rolling across the canvas roof of my Mustang convertible and probably hitting the driveway. Which meant that the keys were most likely lost in our complex somewhere, and not on the street. I would make a note to check with the complex management on Monday to see if any keys were turned in. I hate doing stuff like that when I get absent-minded and I’ve really got to start paying better attention to things. I immediately got up from my nap and took a flashlight out to inspect the entire driveway area. But there wasn’t anything. The alarm started chirping again, so it must be a bad battery. Either that, or I didn’t do the reset properly. Boy, it’s always something. I’m wondering how much better my life might be without all this technology and electronics!
Sunday the 31st – WINDLESS WINGERT! – The past week had really knocked the wind out of me and I was exhausted. I spent the day relaxing, organizing photo files on my computer for transfer, doing auditions, and making phone calls. I did some paperwork later in the evening, and then went to Denny’s to get some food. I watched an episode of “The Invaders” and hit the hay.
And how was YOUR week??!!
PIX FROM THE WEEK
The full moon looked particularly eerie this week – almost like an eye in the sky!
